What my classroom looks like during today’s video journalism workshop

Within 3 minutes of being placed into groups, my students were out in the field, practicing news gathering. They have one hour to produce a 2.5 min segment. This is the first graded video project of term. (The other two in-class projects have been dry runs.) Similar:More split-screen actinghttp://youtu.be/EGgeZWskEs8DesignA New Talent EmergesI tried hard to…

Vulcans, The Secret Garden, and Venn Diagrams

  Similar:Redemption, Part I (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 4, Episode 26) Klingon Empire Faces Civ… Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Gen…DramaJane Eyre and the Invention of the SelfThose who remember Jane Eyre solely as r…BooksMy buddy JTK helps me make a key point in my slideshow. #4c18 #b29Putting speaker notes on an iPad is alwa…AcademiaRing Theory Helps…

Facebook Puts a Downer on Upworthy

Facebook Inc. changed its newsfeed algorithm. You’ll never believe what happened to Upworthy’s traffic next. —Bloomberg. Similar:Impact of One-size-fits-all Web DesignI don’t particularly miss the splash lan…BusinessRussia Conspiracy Theories Trap Putin Malaysia Airlines MH17An old journalism joke suggests that, du…Current_EventsStill More FaceTime FunI realize that video-chatting teenagers …MediaCNN Profiles Former White House "Chief Calligrapher"Today was…

Beyond Usability and Design: The Narrative Web

We see narrative everywhere. It’s a primitive urge, a way to tie cause to effect, to convert the complexity of our experience to a story that makes sense. We want to see narrative everywhere. Stories are fun, exciting, comforting. This isn’t just a matter of bedtime stories and art. The saga of the Great Browser War, the…

Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu

My Anti-Linkbait Pledge: Cynical Overhyping vs. Simply Being Online

When I find something interesting that an online friend has shared via a linkbait site, I hereby pledge that I will link to the origin of the story, rather than a third-party site that republishes it without commentary. The people who share and like and respond to Upworthy and similar linkbait websites are just responding…

Feature: History Lesson: the treasured past of LucasArts point and clicks

I played more of the Sierra point-and-click adventures than the LucasArts ones, but “The Dig” and “Full Throttle” were probably as important to me as half a dozen of my once-favorite TV shows or movies. (I’ve revisited these games by watching YouTube longplay videos.) There’s a fondness throughout the catalogue for the catalogue. Monkey Island…

The Formation of Love

Relationships start with a period of courtship: on Facebook, messages are exchanged, profiles are visited, posts are shared on each other’s timelines. The following graph shows the average number of timeline posts exchanged between two people who are about to become a couple. We studied the group of people who changed their status from “Single”…